Issue 92 - Recording the journey

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Recording the journey

t the risk of sounding a trifle contrived, it was a blending of talents just waiting to happen: the long overdue partnership between The Macallan Single Malt and Albert Watson, recently nominated as one of the twenty most influential photographers of all time.

Licensed in 1824, The Macallan Distillery on Speyside has, by combining the quality of its product with a string of clever marketing initiatives, created one of the world's most popular and prestigious malts. In 2008, the company launched the first of its sponsored Masters of Photography series, the inaugural limited collection being created by the British photographer Rankin.

When Albert Watson was approached to create the sequel, he was invited to come up with an angle that was entirely new and different, and the exhibition Masters of Photography: A Journey which has opened at the London premises of the international auctioneers Phillips de Pury, with similar launches in Russia, Spain, New York and Asia, is the result.

The initial brief, however, was to create the components of a half an hour long documentary film relating to The Macallan's manufacturing process, which, given that he felt that it had been done before, Albert thought sounded excruciatingly boring. “I thought there had to be a better way,” was his response.

And so he persuaded his client to think in terms of a movable storyline which in essence became that of a young couple who are on holiday in Spain and discover a forest from where they follow...